Tag Archives: friday the 13th

Given that we’re smack in the middle of the spooky season- and yes, for many of us, Halloween is a month-long celebration- I find that this is one of the easiest times to marry two of my pop culture passions: video games and horror movies. I’ve made it a mission to play through a few of the horror games I’ve been stowing in my backlog, hence my last review of Layers of Fear and hopefully at least one or two more before the pumpkins and sheets with holes in them are tucked away until next year.

Something keeps bringing me back to GunMedia’s Friday the 13th, though. I’m not big on multiplayer that involves matching up with random people and trying to play a game as I’ve had one too many toxic encounters and, to be honest, it makes me a little anxious to think about despite having had plenty of pleasant rounds of this one. Oddly enough, though, I’m enamored with the single-player offerings that the game has on display. For those of you who are hesitant to grab the game but are fans of the series, allow me to expound on why I still love this game despite not jumping into the real heart of its contents as a stellar-but-still-flawed asymmetrical horror romp. If you’re not a fan- well, obviously I still hope you enjoy this little off-the-cuff spurt of excitement.

Also, just as a precaution, there are some minor spoilers involved below, just in case anyone wants to go in completely blind to either of the single-player parts of the game.

Give Me Something To Scream About

It’s easier to pinpoint exactly what I love about the single-player Challenges. With a total of ten ‘vignettes’, Friday the 13th puts you in the grimy boots of the infamous Jason Voorhees as is in the middle of trying to murder a number of teenagers. While this is exactly what one might expect, there’s a degree of difficulty in opening the next Challenge from the one you are attempting, as you have to put to use keeping track of where your targets are, who might be in their line of sight, and what tools are at your disposal. I’m told this is a lot like the Hitman games, but I honestly haven’t tried those yet so I have to take other gamers’ words for that.

The beauty of these Challenges is all of them are slight variations on scenes from the films. The first finds you just off of a clearing where two young men are having car trouble and while one attempts to fix the car, the other goes off into the woods to relieve himself. Fans of the series will almost instantly recognize this from Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. Another has you causing a power outage, resulting in a stoner couple who have to fix the problem among other people on the grounds. This echoes back to my favorite entry, Friday the 13th Part 3, and winds up playing out much like the climax of that movie does.

The developers were smart about this, however, and they vary up the scenarios so that they feel fresh and a little unfamiliar, partially due to the plugging of the game’s counselors into the roles fans already know and also due to the aspects that sometimes, characters will do something completely different than their analog in the film does. They really do become challenging after the first few, given that I still haven’t actually “completed” the final scenario. Challenges are good fun snippets that play out like a highlight reel for the Friday the 13th series and if like me, you aren’t fantastic at stealth style games, you’ll get some hours worth trying to perfect each mission.

“Paul, There’s Someone In This Room…”

Where I really spent a lot of time, however, was in the game’s Virtual Cabin. When you first ‘boot up’ the cabin, you find yourself in a nice cozy space that has been frozen in time. Teenagers lean against the railing of the second-floor overhang, the room is in just enough disarray to show it’s been lived in, and the only way anything moves is if you pick it up or manipulate it. After inputting some information on a nearby computer, you can move about and hover over nearly every item that stands out during which you are given the option to interact with it. Most of these items will result in a pop-up with some snippet of information about the game, the film series, or something about the actors and development involving both. At its core, the Virtual Cabin is an interactive encyclopedia of knowledge on Friday the 13th that even I, as a pretty stalwart fan, found some new bits of information from. That in and of itself was pretty worthwhile to me.

Then I noticed the puzzles. Small items that were out of place made their way into my ‘inventory’. The first time this happened, I stopped and my heart got a little fluttery- I wasn’t just looking up facts. There was a game to be played here and I would be damned if I wouldn’t solve these puzzles. Some of them involved putting figurines into a diorama of a scene from one of the movies in their correct positions. Another involved putting the different masks that Jason has worn in order on hooks against the wall. Every piece brought me closer to- something. I wasn’t really sure what. Eventually, I found my way into a part of the cabin I couldn’t get into before and with one interaction, it was over.

That didn’t seem right.

I jumped back in and after some struggles (and I’ll admit, a quick glance at a walkthrough), I found myself in a very different Virtual Cabin. To be clear, it was the same but after a few actions, the lights were out. The power box now had a large axe jutting from it. The frozen teenagers weren’t in their spots anymore in the main lobby of the cabin. There was a sense that someone was definitely in the cabin with me and that I was no longer safely doing puzzles and learning about my favorite film series. It felt like I was plunged into a survival horror situation. Hovering over things now gave different information which was still interesting trivia but stressed that I was now in a very unfamiliar setting. Once again, there were puzzles to be solved- but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little tense and dangerous to be walking around at that point.

All of that was before the third run through.

Some Folks Sure Got a Strange Idea of Entertainment

I won’t go any further with describing the Virtual Cabin experience since hopefully, you’ll get the chance to check it out yourself some time if it interests you. Are the Challenges and the Virtual Cabin worth the price of the whole game? Not really, though you can definitely get your hours worth out of them if you’re a big fan of the film series. While the multiplayer aspect of the game is pretty fun, I’ve honestly gotten a lot of mileage out of the single-player that I didn’t expect. I also think that this aspect gets swept into the shadow of the online aspects of Friday the 13th unfairly. If you’ve bought the game as an enthusiast and you haven’t spent time in the single-player modes, you really should. A lot of love for the source material and quality work went into both aspects and neither aspect really seem to get the recognition they deserve.

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Off the top of my head, I can list a vast quantity of high profile gaming moments that everyone seems to have been affected by in their formative gaming years- Final Fantasy VI’s opera scene, the final battle with Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat, any occurrence beginning with ‘the death of’; there are so many definitive events that people remember because of their magnitude within their games’ worlds or how abruptly they sideswiped the player. This doesn’t change their impact. Heck, I have one of those moments tattooed on my leg it had such relevance to me.

What people don’t always actively take into account is that there are so many smaller beats that meant a lot to gamers for a wide variety of reasons. Video games are established to illicit some kind of emotion or reaction from those participating in what they have to offer. Even through the memories of Final FantasyVII and Chrono Trigger ripping at my heartstrings, I started to reflect on moments that stood out to me that may not stand out to the community at large and why they still remained so prominent in my retrospective eye.

So feel free to check out some of my personal remembrances of times past! They may not be industry shattering, but they are definitely a glimpse into my gamer inner workings.Continue reading →

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In mere days, 2017 will have left us, and in its wake, there was a glut of fantastic games that graced our various consoles and electronic devices. Being that I tend to focus more on old-school games and more cost-effective options than new releases tend to lend themselves to, my experiences with games that were released in 2017 are slim. I did still manage to play a few great games that were actually released this year.

Most of my criteria for the games that I added on to this list were simply that they were released within the year and that I had played enough of them to really formulate a solid opinion on them. Some games that didn’t make the cut I’ve been enjoying but I’m still cutting my teeth on- Nintendo’s Super Mario Odyssey and Deep End Games’ Perception being two notable titles that are very promising- and a lot of games I completed this year are a year or two off- Night School Studio’s Oxenfree comes to mind. Honestly, if you’re looking for recommendations of games outside of the past year? I’m a wealth of information and offerings.

What did I manage to play from this year, though, that has stuck with me and made some kind of impact? After thinking thoroughly through my playlist over the past twelve months and sequencing them by relevance- well, I’m just impressed by people being able to work out top 10 lists without endless agonizing.

Now, to add to the top lists of the year of 2017- here is my list of my completely subjective and biased top five games from the year (and one honorable mention) for your consideration and entertainment!

(Oh, and as an added note, while I try to skip over spoilers as much as possible since I’ll be writing a bit more about some of these in upcoming posts, there very well may be spoilers. As vague or minute as they might be, I’d rather warn my readers than not!)

Continuing in the October spirit, I thought about a lot of the unrecognized horror games from the ages. Having just covered the Atari 2600 chapters of some of these games, I figured why not jump to the Commodore 64?

I know there’s a Friday the 13th game there. I’ve played it before.

I love Friday the 13th.

Heck, I could even publish the review of it on Friday the 13th to get everybody as psyched as me that the day falls in October this year!

Well, let me tell you why I’m posting about this game now: because Friday the 13th means too much to me to post about this on that day.

Listen up, and I’ll tell the interesting and sordid tale of the Friday the 13th game that even the NES version may outshine.

It almost seems laughable to review this given the reputation that this game has already, but you have to hear me out. Growing up, this game was a game that scared the hell out of me. I was five or so but bear with me. When I found it as I started my collecting, I figured shelling out a few bucks would be worth it, and it was definitely worth what I paid. It is well known for its unforgiving difficulty and repetitive nature, and it is certainly guilty of both of those things. If you have a couple of hours to kill, though, it’s not such a bad experience. Continue reading →